The Traumatic Childhood Club
by Pica Britanica
Summary: T'was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except for the quartermaster still tapping on his keyboard. When an unexpected visitor turns up on Q's doorstep on Christmas eve, he finds that he shares more than just a place of work with one Double-O agent.


**A/N: So this idea wouldn't leave me alone at all today until I finally got it written down. Merry Christmas to you all, let me know what you think of it in a nice review - think of it as a Christmas present to me. :)**

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><p>The night before Christmas and the only sound was the tapping of computer keys as Q sat cross-legged in the blue armchair, his laptop balanced atop his knees. Reams of code were reflected in his glasses as he typed out just one more code. Glancing down at the clock in the corner of the screen, he sighed.<p>

23:14

Only three quarters of an hour until Christmas held the nation in its grip for another year. If he finished this one, he could reprogram the system for the comms units and send that email before he really had to go to bed. Resolute in his decision, he turned his attention back to the cursor on the screen, blinking away at him balefully. "Just need to get these finished," he muttered to himself as he positioned his fingers above the keys.

As his finger hit the first key, four thundering knocks on the front door jolted him upright, almost tipping the laptop from its precarious perch. "What on earth?" he snapped, his heart hammering in his chest. Setting his life's work down on the arm of the chair and praying that it didn't fall in his absence, Q rose from the chair. He stretched the kinks and aches from his legs and rolled his neck as he wandered from the living room into the hallway. The thunderous knocks came again, more insistent this time.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Q called to his unexpected caller.

"Well bloody hurry up, it's freezing out here!" a familiar voice called back.

"Bond?" Q fumbled with the keys before flinging the door open to find a disgruntled, soaked Double-O Seven on his doorstep. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Raising a bottle of scotch in a gloved hand, Bond raised an eyebrow. "It's Christmas," he said, as though that answered Q's question.

With a bemused nod, Q said "Yes, I had noticed." He pinched the bridge of his nose and screwed his eyes shut. Perhaps this was all just a bizarre dream and when he opened his eyes, there wouldn't be an MI6 agent on his threshold. "Why are you here though? And how did you get my address? That's supposed to be classified."

A smirk spread across the agent's face. "Of course it is, don't worry, I won't tell anyone." He glanced behind the Quartermaster into the brightly lit hallway. "Aren't you going to invite me in?" he asked.

Apparently he wasn't going to just disappear then.

Q sighed and raised his hands in defeat. "Fine, come in before you let all the heat out." He turned on his heel and headed back into the living room, knowing full well that Bond would follow him. Sure enough, the agent wandered in merely seconds after him; and, Q noted, without his shoes. "So, to what do I owe the pleasure, Double-O Seven? When I said I needed your equipment back as soon as possible, I didn't mean directly upon your return."

Flashing him a smile that would have made lesser men quake in their boots, Bond shrugged. "Think of it as an early Christmas present." He placed the scotch on the table between them and beside it, his Walther. Would wonders never cease? The gun was, for the most part, undamaged. "And anyway, your apartment is closer than mine."

Raising an eyebrow, Q turned to face the agent. Now, he could see the blood flecks splattered along his collar, the dark smudges under his eyes and the way he guarded his right side almost imperceptibly. "You can sit down you know," he said with a smile.

As Q had been appraising Bond's appearance, so Bond had been appraising Q's living room. No doubt he had seen the precariously balanced laptop behind the young Quartermaster, the piles of books stacked on every surface apart from the desk in the corner of the room, on which sat Q's mainframe computer. Q watched as Bond's sharp blue eyes alighted on the pristine leather sofa and then the threadbare, faded blue armchair by the radiator. Thankfully, Bond made the wise choice of sitting on the sofa, leaning back against the cool leather.

"Can I offer you a drink?" Q asked as he tapped a few final keys on the laptop before shutting the lid, saving his work from Bond's prying eyes.

Nodding towards the bottle on the table, Bond replied "Just a glass will suffice, thank you."

With a long suffering sigh, Q wandered through to the dimly lit kitchen and dug through the cupboard for a clean glass before flicking the kettle on and leaning against the counter as it boiled. While he waited, he plucked a tea bag from the box and dumped it in his second favourite mug, his favourite being the one beside his chair with the scrabble Q on it. Instead, he would have to make do with the Tetris mug. The kettle whistled cheerily beside him, making his heart leap in his chest for the second time that night. Muttering about stupid agents keeping stupid hours, Q made his customary Earl Grey before returning to the living room, only to find the aforementioned stupid agent sat in_ his_ seat, attempting to gain access to his laptop.

"How many encryptions do you have on this bloody computer?" Bond asked, never tearing his eyes from the screen.

"Not enough, evidently," Q said, setting down the glass and his tea on the table. With a deft hand, he pushed the lid down, almost trapping Bond's fingers in the process before retreating to the sofa with his tea. Bond's gaze turned at last from the laptop to Q as he curled up on the sofa, tucking his long legs beneath himself. With a sigh, he reached forward, wincing as he stretched his injured shoulder, swiftly opened the scotch and poured himself a glass.

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, Q drinking his tea and Bond quietly swigging his scotch. The only sound to be heard was cars rushing past, filled most likely with people desperate to get home for Christmas. They probably had a family waiting for them to return, waiting to spend the day with them. Q slowly turned to look at Bond, and frowned. "Don't you need to be getting home?" he asked quietly.

As though slapped awake, Bond started and his eyes snapped upward to find Q's. He frowned. "What for?"

Q shrugged, suddenly feeling very vulnerable under the Double-O agent's scrutiny. "Well, you don't want to keep them waiting."

Though his words were barely more than a whisper, Bond heard them. He set down his glass and leaned forward in his chair, his eyes never once leaving Q's face. "Unless I've gained some unwanted houseguests while I've been away, there's no-one waiting for me at home." His tone was light, but there was a seriousness in his eyes that Q instantly latched on to.

Nodding his understanding, Q placed his mug down beside Bond's glass and ran a hand through his hair. "No relatives, no people of interest, so to speak. A solitary operative." He'd heard the same words being used in MI6, the tone they were spoken in had been approving, approving of a well-kempt, bemused, twenty-one year-old who would one day become the Quartermaster of MI6. The tone Q spoke them in was much more sombre, however.

"Precisely," Bond said, his baritone voice snatching Q from his darkening reverie. Inhaling deeply, Bond sat upright in his chair and pressed a finger to his lips. A small frown creased his brow and narrowed his piercing eyes as though he was reading into Q's very soul. When he spoke, although his voice was nothing more than a whisper, Q heard it clear as a bell.

"I read your file the other day."

Somewhere in the distance, Big Ben chimed the first stroke of midnight.

Neither of them spoke.

The bell continued to chime. Still neither of them uttered a word.

Minutes passed after the old bell had chimed the final stroke of midnight before Q finally found the power to think in the maelstrom of his mind. He cleared the lump in his throat and blinked away the tears that threatened to spill down his cheeks before raising his eyes to meet Bond's. "I see," was all he could say before the tears threatened to return.

In the haze of his mind, he could just make out his mother's soft smile, his father's rumbling laugh, but even they were fading from his memory now. He swallowed thickly before taking a quivering breath and uncurling himself. "If you're expecting me to take the opportunity to have a fine heart-to-heart with you, Double-O Seven, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. My parents were both killed when I was a child, I was there when they pulled their bodies from the wreckage. It isn't an experience I wish to relive."

Bond shook his head and shot him a wry smile. "I was under no such illusions, believe me, Q. I just wanted to. . . ." he trailed off, and a flicker of uncertainty passed across his cool expression. "We aren't so different, you and I. Both exceptional in our field, both isolated by our past."

Q snorted a bitter laugh. "Well, perhaps we should start a club: The 'My Parents Died Traumatically when I was a Child and I have Unresolved Issues about It and Chose to join a Dangerous Career' club."

"Isn't that MI6?"

A small smile twitched at the corners of Q's mouth. "Indeed. The upper echelons of her majesty's secret service do seem to be packed with wards of the state."

"Well, she always said that orphans make the best recruits."

They fell into silence once more as they contemplated the truth of their status. When all was said and done, they were just orphans, no family to speak of, no-one to miss them should anything go awry. Of course they thrived in MI6 – with every new assignment they succeeded on, they received more praise, more of something that could be a substitute for the love they had lost. And so they would continue to drag themselves through danger in order to regain whatever scraps of affection they could find.

It was pitiful really.

Suddenly, Earl Grey didn't seem to cut it anymore. Q rose from the sofa and padded his way into the kitchen, retrieving the other clean glass from the back of the cupboard before returning to the living room and pouring himself a large glass of scotch. He looked up to find Bond watching him once again, those icy blue eyes piercing into him and unravelling the carefully positioned defences there.

With a sardonic smirk, Q raised his glass at the agent sat in his favourite seat. "To the best operatives MI6 has to offer."

Slowly, Bond raised his own glass. "The best MI6 has to offer," he replied, inclining his head.

Q knocked back his drink in one loud gulp before pouring himself a second glass. "And a merry Christmas to you," he muttered between swigs.

It wasn't until much later, when Q had finally drunk himself to sleep, that Bond made his reply. He pulled the blanket from the back of the sofa and tucked it around the sleeping quartermaster's sprawled form. As he slipped out of the house and into the cold December night, he turned back and glanced up at the living room window. "Merry Christmas to you too, Q."


End file.
